Gene Marckx

Current Projects

A literary novel by Eugene Marckx (175,000 words) Synopsis In August 1952, twelve-year-old Benny Murdock is anxious about his father, a soldier missing for over a year in the Korean War. He goes with his mother to her parents’ farm on Willapa Bay. His second night there, longing for his father, he glimpses a gimpy-legged […]

Synopsis of a novel by Eugene Marckx (112,000 words) Part One: For years it is an unspoken shame that Queen Vernice cannot carry a child to term. But in the aftermath of a terrible storm she falls into the garden mud with King Daemus. And she is with child again. Then out of stubborn […]

I have just entered here a letter that I am sending to prospective agents for my new fantasy novel, The Titan of Wisdom. Let me know if you might be interested in representing my work. Please look under the Proposals category.

Eugene Marckx

I live in the shadow of the North Cascade Mountains, near the Pilchuck River, not too far from Seattle, Washington, with my wife, an artist. Recently I have been focusing on a fantasy novel,, The Titan of Wisdom, arising from my many years of storytelling, for children and for my men’s group here in Snohomish County.

I was taught storytelling in the oral tradition. I tell the old tales as well as my own in just that way. And my narrative increasingly is influenced by this, the long or the short, wherever it leads. I craft my poems, which are often slowly revealed to me, line by line, word by singing word.

Mystery–

the dark counterweight to what I think I know.

In my family we were all windbag storytellers, but I was in the middle, between louder brothers and darling sisters. So I wasn’t much seen or heard. At the University of Washington in the Sixties, I imagined I could write a whole novel–if I could get up steam. Then I stumbled into Theodore Roethke’s verse writing class, into the white heat of making poems, in what would be the last year of the great poet’s life.

For years after, I was strung between poetry and narrative, until fatherhood grounded me in daily love and bread. I worked nights in a bakery while writing–and rewriting–a novel, as well as a good many poems that got me through those times.

I found some recovery and healing by telling the wise old tales to children in schools. I was Baba Yaga. I was Boots. I was Blue Jay. And I was the one those children were glad to see. Now I tell the old tales (and my own) to men who look for healing as I do in a long-standing men’s group.

My writing practice begins each day with two journals, one for dreams and shadow material and one for verse–for what comes to the blank page. Beyond this I steer slowly, staring through the fog with my headlights low.